Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is great that the Minister and I agree on something for the first time since I have come up here. Tomorrow morning the Minister could divert flights from Dublin to Shannon and 3 million people would get out of this country with no delays. Some 2 million more people in Cork can be redeployed. The Minister was talking about bringing them up to Dublin but I am talking about taking them out of Dublin.

I have people from Dublin ringing me on a constant basis telling me the Government has destroyed their future and that of their children and grandchildren because it allowed Dublin to be overpopulated and they can no longer afford for their children to live there. They want the Minister to deploy everything back to the regional areas so all our families can live, if they want to live in Limerick or if they want to live in Dublin they are allowed do that. Dublin has been overpopulated for years and all the business has been shoved into Dublin. It is time it was dispersed around the country. Then the proper transport infrastructure would work on a business case basis because the population would be dispersed. We could have proper rail, bus and transport systems. The failure of the Government is that everything for years has been shoved into Dublin that needs to be dispersed around the country.

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